Recess Can Be A Dangerous Place

Last year Lucas told me about a girl in his class who ended up with a broken arm after too many kids were going down the slide at one time. I thought, geesh! a broken arm from the slide at recess?!

This year Lucas had experienced the perils of a playground at recess - when kids are released into the outdoors from the confines of their classrooms. When it's a free-for-all, chaotic, screaming, sensory-overloaded part of their day. It's a reprieve of the quietness and stillness of the classrooms and hallways. Of course there are still rules to follow on the playground, but order is much harder to maintain.

Thankfully my boy didn't end up with a broken arm, or broken anything - although I was worried that he might have a broken, or at the very least, a hairline fracture of his jaw.

Lucas was running towards a piece of climbing playground equipment called "The Spider" and he collided with another running child. Lucas broke his fall with his chin ... on a metal balance beam.

I returned the nurse's call about 20 minutes after she left me a message. She said Lucas went back to class; there wasn't any blood, he didn't bite his tongue and his teeth were all in-tact. She let me know that there was some swelling and there would inevitably be some bruising as well.

When he got home from school that afternoon I was not prepared for just how much swelling of the chin and along the jawline there was. I couldn't believe he said he wasn't in any pain - although he couldn't open his mouth wide enough to speak. To me his chin looked like Jay Leno. The pictures don't quite capture what the swelling really looked like.

He was much more mellow the rest of that afternoon than he normally is after school. Later that night he couldn't eat his dinner though; he wasn't able to open his mouth wide enough to take a bite or if he managed to do that it hurt too much to bite down.

Off to urgent care for x-rays as that was when I really started to worry about a fracture in his jaw.

While we were there signs of a mild concussion were showing - he was pretty tired and kept saying he just wanted to go home and go to bed, then he said his forehead hurt, then he vomited.

Thank goodness the x-rays came back all clear and he passed all the tests the dr performed for a head injury. He did stay home from school the next day and boy did those bruises show up!

About a week after that incident it was picture day at school - I can still see the slightest of fading bruises and a touch of swelling lingering on to his chin. I'm just thankful it wasn't any more serious than that!

And now he's a big ol' 2nd grader: